Unrest and violence have crippled Liberia’s infrastructure. Phone service is so-so. The banks are open only intermittently. Most North Americans seldom think about Liberia and its thousands of raped women, its cholera patients and starving refugees, its looting sprees and property damage. The country’s nightmare hasn’t ended with daylight.
“We are saying this not just for Liberia,” says Tokpah, once a member of one of the rebel groups. “We want the whole world to see, to know, the impact that war has. It is not good. So we are trying to transform an instrument of war into an instrument of peace.”
It takes more time than you might think.
To shape a bullet into a cross, you have to hold it firmly in a vise while splitting it open with a hacksaw. Then, with a pair of pliers, you spread the shell open and pound it with a hammer into the shape of a cross. Then you even up the edges with a file and smooth them with sandpaper.
Tokpah and his brother-in-law, George Kollie, started the project while hanging around the Lutheran World Federation/World Service compound in Monrovia, looking for jobs. A worker there, Reinhard Tietze, first put them to work planting coconut palms on the grounds, then thought up the crosses-from-shells idea and bought the first few for use as gifts for visitors.
When the World Council of Churches learned of the project, it quickly made the peace crosses part of its Decade to Overcome Violence. But sales slowed dramatically when Tietze left Liberia, and hasn’t recovered.
That’s one reason the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Peacemaking Program is making the crosses available in the United States. The first batch went to participants in last summer’s peacemaking conferences. Early next month, Presbyterian Distribution Services (PDS) will be selling the crosses in batches of five for $10 — if all goes well in shipping and they arrive on time. The order number is 70270-03028; the (toll-free) phone number is (800) 524-2612.
Sara Lisherness, the coordinator of the Peacemaking Program, says she decided to promote the crosses for two reasons: To lift up the Decade to Overcome Violence and to remind PCUSA members that Liberia has fallen apart.
“We’ve had tons of requests for more crosses. But it has been very difficult (to obtain them) because of the unstable situation,” says Lisherness, who was moved by the stories of the men who’ve turned their lives from war to peace. “The crosses represent for me ... the not-yet. We’re in that in-between time. People are making these out of shells. … They know that God does not want them killing each other.
“But what we need to be working for is a time when they won’t be making bullets, either.”
Albarstine Donkpoie, one of the cross-makers, thinks that way, too. He has seen plenty of violence, including one incident so horrific that it changed him forever. He saw a young man kill his own mother when she objected to his decision to take up arms.
Since then, he says, he has been preaching peace and denouncing violence.
The crosses, for Donkpoie, are a way of asking for God’s protection in a world gone crazy. The little bits of metal represent for him what he calls the “transformation from evil to good,” like the change Saul experienced on the Damascus Road, when he became Paul and shifted gears from vengeance to reconciliation.
Donkpoie, like many thousands of other Liberians, is marooned in Monrovia, far from his home village. Many thousands more now live in Sierra Leone, Guinea or the Ivory Coast.
In response to the question, “Has your life changed because of the war?” he answers, “Yes — after transformation.” But this time, he is talking about a shift in his interior geography, not exterior.
Tokpah tells a similar story. No job. A ruined house. Sleeping in the yard. Like all of his neighbors. “Everyone was looted,” he says. “This is why we’re praying to God. And why we are asking for Christian friends to come to our aid. To build back our life.” |
